I think that for a lot of guys being seen crying is a sign of weakness. I don’t know, but for me, I’ve never really seen the stigma behind it. People cry, regardless of gender, that doesn’t affect my view of them if I see them crying, they’re no lesser of a man to me, they’re just sad. I think the more we stigmatise guys crying or showing ‘weakness’ the more we’re going to see the rise in mental health amongst guys. Although, I think that genetically women are more emotional than men, we therefore tend to see women crying more often than us which is why we associate crying as being a feminine trait and not so much a masculine one.
The link between emotion and us males is a very touchy subject to discuss, unless of course its emotions such as anger and hate very aggressive emotions. But the emotion sadness is not a topic that is likely to be displayed or even discussed by us males purely because of the connotations linked with such an emotion. Weak, fragile, soft are all words associated with sadness which is somehow perfectly normal and accepted by society when women freely experience this emotion. Yet for us males we are forced to conceal this emotion only to release it behind closed doors. I myself for example choose not to express such emotion in front of any individual including my family and closest friends purely because I would never want them to witness my emotional struggle every day with sadness being strongest emotion of all. It’s also because I would never want anyone to view me as being a weak male due to that being highly frowned upon by the male community, it’s taken me years to establish this false image surrounding my personality of who I am and would never risk exposing who I really am, that is why I’m very selective when it comes to the emotions I display. Women however have the ability to display any emotion they desire and still receive sympathy and support, but us males are forced to lock away and battle these depressing emotions on our own for if we did express them we would just be told to ‘man up’.
Society tells us that men should always be the shoulder to cry on, and with the roles reversed it is considered to be unmanly. This is one of the main reasons men are so concealed and less talkative about such subjects. Any negative emotion is a sign of weakness. However, with the evolution of equality there should be no reason why we can’t show any emotion, or express emotion in a more sensitive way. Crying isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign you’re human.
Showing emotion has long been a stereotypical sign of weakness for Males in the past and those attitudes are prevalent even in very early years at primary school with boys being labelled cry baby’s if they show emotion, whereas girls are comforted and told everything will be ok and it is accepted as a normal female behaviour. These early interactions with emotion form a person’s future beliefs and can lead to men covering or bottling up feelings which in time can lead to much more serious mental illness. From a personal point of view I know I feel a lot healthier if I display feelings and emotions and I also know how down I can become if I bottle emotions up.
A photo series based on male emotions. Expressing the feeling we don’t always see in magazines, the personality behind each of them, along with their own view on society’s changing outlook on masculinity and male emotion.